


I Need Your Eyes

by maskingtape



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Post-Season/Series 01, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:55:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23815732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maskingtape/pseuds/maskingtape
Summary: Oh, to be able to see ourselves as others see us!Din and Cara do some people-watching during a stakeout.
Relationships: Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 68





	I Need Your Eyes

“Just our luck,” Din sighs. “The idiot wants a new look.” 

Cara peers through her binoculars. “You don’t seriously think our guy is in the salon to change his appearance? Does he not understand the concept of a tracking fob?

“He's rich enough to be that dumb. Minor nobility, remember?”

“Minor moron is more like it.”

Din and Cara have tracked their quarry—an informant who had developed an acute case of self-preservation just before the trial—to a prosperous Inner Rim planet.The tracking fob has led them to the main city’s transport shuttle hub, adjacent to an open-air bazaar. There’s a lot of foot traffic: merchants rushing to catch the shuttle, families out for a day of shopping. Staking out the plaza from an alley across the way, the two bounty hunters are themselves cloaked by the long shadows of late afternoon. Minutes ago, the fugitive had disembarked from a shuttle, only to quickly duck into a salon.

“I’d prefer not to move in and grab him,” Din says. “With crowds this size, things get unpredictable.”

Cara nods. “Only one entrance to that shop—he’ll have to come out eventually. A salon shave and haircut shouldn’t take long, right?”

“You’re asking me?”

She shrugs.

After a few minutes of silence, Cara points at an older man sitting on a bench near the bazaar. “That guy reminds me of you.”

Din zooms in via his HUD. Though the man’s face and hair are whitened with age, his posture is as straight as the cane he rests his hands on. “That old codger? Seems more like a Kuiil type to me.”

“Forget his age. Take a look at his outfit—it’s meticulous.”

She’s right. The elder’s robes are impeccable, and the pleats of his headdress admirably crisp in an old-fashioned way. He had probably spent as much time to outfit himself that morning as it had taken the Mandalorian to don his armor.

“I bet he’s judging all of us slobs,” Cara laughs.

The realization comes to him in a rush. “No,” Din says. “Other people can do what they want. But he’s showing respect to the people who raised him—by dressing the way they did.” Motionless on his bench, the old man watches the activity in the square. “If you made him wear anything else, he wouldn’t even recognize himself.”

Cara waits patiently. Tilts her head. Waits some more.

“Sure, okay. We’re not unalike,” Din allows.

 _Two can play at this game,_ he thinks as he scans the plaza. “My turn,” he says, gesturing towards a freckled boy. “That kid has Cara Dune written all over him.”

"The one fighting over the toy?" A tug of war is underway, with a toy blaster as the prize. The freckled boy yanks so hard that he loses his balance, but quickly roots himself on the ground and uses his weight—and his grip on the still-contested toy—to swivel and launch the other kid into the bushes. He barks with laughter.

Cara shakes her head in disbelief. “A bully? Is that how you see me?”

Her swagger sometimes reminds Din of the older boys in the Fighting Corps who had liked to intimidate him, but he's hardly going to admit that to her now.

He stops to choose his words. What _does_ he mean? That some people never seem more alive than when they’re fighting. That you can almost hear the life force crackling inside them. It has nothing to do with mistreating the weak.

“What I mean,” he says carefully, “is that not everybody responds to a punch with a grin.”

She turns to face him, arms akimbo. “I _like_ knowing how quickly a fight’s going to end. If they can’t knock me down the first time, they never will.”

“Trust me, Cara—I know.”

Her eyes flash. It’s not real exasperation, Din can tell. Still, some kind of peace offering seems in order. He points at the bazaar. “That woman, with the flower stall. That’s you too. I mean, there’s a resemblance.”

Cara squints at the flower-seller: Ithorian, light blue skin, buxom, guffawing uproariously with a customer. “Go on, explain this similarity to me.”

Din finds himself grasping again. _It’s so obvious. Why can’t he fit words to the feeling?_ “She seems … cozy.”

“Cozy?” Cara raises a dangerous eyebrow. “You mean ‘ample’? Or ‘jolly’?”

“Cozy as in safety. And warmth.”

Cara’s expression softens, and she nods slowly. “So you’re thinking this gal over there is tough but fair. Generous to a fault.”

 _Very generous,_ Din thinks. _How much more can he ask of her before she decides she's given enough?_

He replies, “I can safely say she’s one of the finest florists I’ve ever known.”

“This is a great game,” Cara announces. “I love this game.”

A few children have started a game of leapfrog. After a short negotiation, the freckled boy is allowed to join in. He gives himself a running start, but instead of vaulting over the first kid, he simply lands with a thud onto the girl’s back and sits on her until she squawks and her knees buckle.

There’s a long pause as Cara’s eyes sweep the square. “Are we still playing?” Din asks, bemused.

“Yup. Oh, here we go—”

A tiny Zabrak toddler dashes across the plaza, dropping toys as he runs. A harried-looking Zabrak female gives chase, but her pursuit is slowed as she scrambles to pick up the toys.

A laugh spills out of Cara. “You have to admit, the resemblance is uncanny.”

Din gives a rueful shrug. “It’s like I’m having an out-of-body experience, watching myself chasing the Kid.” He wonders if his _ad’ika_ has woken up yet from his nap on the Razor Crest.

“Ah, found another one.” Cara points at the food stalls. “See that guy making crepes?” A slight young man pours a precise amount of batter onto a giant pan, then swirls a trowel to paint it smooth even as he pumps a foot-pedal to surge the flames beneath the pan. Nodding at his customer, he tosses the thin pancake into the air with a flick of his wrist—and then catches it with the trowel, twirling it mid-air before slapping the crepe down, cleanly flipped and folded.

“No wasted movements. Strong situational awareness. Excellent flame control,” Cara says. “I could watch him all day.”

“Thanks,” Din says, surprised.

“Just telling you what I see,” she replies.

As new customers arrive, the vendor pours the batter for another crepe. From the alley, Din and Cara have a perfect view of the freckled boy creeping up from behind—heading towards the pile of cooling crepes. His steps are exaggeratedly furtive and his face is screwed up in concentration.

“What a little terror,” Cara says, but her voice has no disapproval in it. “Needs to work on his stealth.”

Just as the boy snags a crepe, he is yanked back by his collar—by none other than the blue flower-seller. She starts scolding him. The freckled boy hollers. The crepe vendor whirls around.

“Stars, this game is folding in on itself,” Cara exclaims. “What just happened there?”

“Simple. You tried to ambush me—classic bully behavior, by the way—but your conscience said n—”

She punches him in the shoulder.

On the rare occasions when Din has wondered what he was doing with his life, he can’t begin to answer the question without flashing back to the terror of cowering in the bunker: his parents’ panicked faces, the blaster arm of a super battle droid, then the outstretched hand of an armored warrior. One minute, he was an orphan—the next, a Mandalorian foundling. There was no other way.

But this game, for some reason, allows him to bypass all that. Instead of struggling to reinvent his childhood, he’s gazing out at dozens—hundreds—of ready-made adult lives to choose from. It reminds him of standing at a toy stall with his _ad’ika_ , examining the little figurines one by one. “Who’s to say I couldn’t …” He tries again. “I could be any one of these men. That shuttle pilot or the mech over there. Maybe even that busker.”

“That guy playing the flute?” Cara frowns. “I didn’t know you were musical.”

“I’m not. But that busker’s not very good either,” he says bluntly, which gets a chuckle out of her. “If I were him, I’d hang it up—give up music and find another way to make a living.” Having options—that was the whole point, wasn’t it? How his life would have been different if it had somehow never intersected with the Tribe. But options mean uncertainty, he reminds himself, and indecision can be its own form of torment. Unbidden, the Creed appears before him as a gleaming beskar road stretching to the horizon. No swerving, no deviations.

It’s odd to be in the Inner Rim. When you spend so much time around lowlifes in skugholes, it’s easy to forget that most of the galaxy is made up of families.

The Mandalorian watches a couple walking by, flanked by several adolescents. Even if their robes didn’t mark them as belonging to the same family, the facial resemblance would be a dead giveaway. The patriarch claps one of his sons on the shoulder—a proprietary and proud gesture. Reluctantly, Din drags his gaze away.

He doesn’t regret how he was raised, the training he endured, the responsibility he carries. He may not know why he was saved, but he knows he can never repay that debt. Din says none of this out loud. Instead, he hears himself muttering: “How many of these people even know how to hold a blaster?”

“You never know,” Cara replies, and for once Din can’t read her expression. “Name me one planet that wasn’t touched by the war. Plenty of ordinary people learned to loot dead bodies and aim rifles and build bombs. Even cozy shopkeepers.” Her eyes linger on a woman with a child asleep in her lap. The mother combs her fingers through the girl's hair, gathering it into a loose braid. Clearing her throat, Cara pulls out her blaster to check that it’s fully charged. “What’s taking our guy so long? Did he ask for a fucking dye job?”

Two minutes later, the fugitive emerges from the salon. He had, in fact, opted for a fucking dye job. Surrounded by bystanders, he starts to head towards the shuttle bay. Din tenses up. Cara begins calculating lines of approach through the crowd that will converge to block his escape. Then the man pivots. He starts walking away from the plaza. As they tail him, leaving the hubbub behind them, Din and Cara both breathe a sigh of relief. No need to endanger these good people.

Evening has fallen, and the bazaar is emptying out. The Ithorian flower-seller walks over to the elderly man, and touches his shoulder, seeming to ask him for … permission? The old man pats her blue fingers and inclines his head in a dignified nod. She sweetly tucks a flower bud into his collar and walks off, humming a tune. He continues to sit and wait, eyes fixed ahead.


End file.
